Not since Simply Red’s album Stars topped the albums chart in 1992 have vinyl records been included in the basket of goods used to calculate annual inflation, but a rise in sales over recent years has brought them back as a marker of UK shop prices.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the “resurgence of popularity” in vinyl records meant they should be included among the 744 items used to calculate inflation each month, in its latest annual shake-up of the basket.
Sales of vinyl were given an extra push in the UK last year by Taylor Swift’s album 1989 (Taylor’s version), which was the biggest-selling vinyl record, while the Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds ranked as the highest-selling vinyl record by a British artist.
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Interesting to see vinyl back on the list, though I’ll be honest, vinyl pricing seems to vary massively by whether it’s a release people actually want.
A big release could be going for £40 forever, whereas those Adele records that gobbled up manufacturing capacity for months will be hanging around the bargain bins for years.Not sure how “SD card” and “USB stick” are going to be any use at all, if I’m honest. As how do you define what the capacity for that year should be? It’ll wobble up and down a fair bit if they went by the most popular size of the year.
It does seem a bit odd because the sales are being driven by temporary factors like Taylor Swift’s album. However, as they also included, and now removed, hand sanitiser they aren’t against this kind of thing, although I wonder how well the constantly shifting contents of the “basket” can properly measure inflation.
